Suzanne Marie Collins

Suzanne Marie Collins (June 8, 1966 – July 12, 1985) was a United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal who was tortured, raped, and murdered by Sedley Alley in 1985. At the time of her murder she was stationed at Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, Tennessee. Collins was a student undergoing training at the base, and was scheduled to graduate from avionics training on the day of her murder. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Early life and education Suzanne Collins was the daughter of Jack and Trudy Collins. She graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Abduction and murder On the evening of July 11, 1985, Suzanne Marie Collins was abducted while jogging on the base, and was taken to nearby Edmund Orgill Park. There, the kidnapper severely beat Collins, fracturing her skull, before repeatedly shoving a tree limb up her vagina with enough force to penetrate her abdomen and tear one of her lungs. The autopsy would state that Collins died from blunt force trauma to the head and internal hemorrhaging from the tree limb.

Collins' body was discovered the next morning by sheriff's deputies, after her roommate reported her missing. Clothes, including a man's red underwear, were found close by. When word got to the base of the murder, Alley was immediately arrested by military police. He voluntarily gave a statement to the police, admitting to having killed Collins but gave a substantially false account of the circumstances of the killing. He claimed that his wife Lynne went to a Tupperware party, which had angered him. He drank two six-packs of beer and a bottle of wine. He told authorities that he had gone out for more liquor when his car accidentally hit Collins as she jogged near the air base. He also claimed he accidentally killed the young woman when she fell on a screwdriver he was holding as he was trying to help her. He said he had inserted the tree branch into her vagina postmortem to make it look like she was raped and murdered. However, an autopsy revealed that her skull had been fractured as the result of suffering repeated beatings, there were no screwdriver wounds, and no wounds consistent with being hit by a car. When the inconsistencies between Alley's confession and the crime scene were noted, prosecutors suggested that Alley was downplaying the crime to make himself look better. Alley himself said that he had confessed because the police threatened to arrest his wife unless he told them what they wanted to hear. Alley's defense was that he had multiple personality disorder and did not remember committing the crime, which two psychologists supported. A further appeal in 2004 requested DNA testing on hairs found on Collins' waistband and on the soles of her feet, a pubic hair found in her shoe, and hairs found on the tree branch which was used to rape her. This request was denied, with the court holding that this evidence would not exonerate Alley even if it was found to belong to someone else, as it could easily be the result of innocent everyday contact and there was no evidence it belonged to the killer. The court also questioned if the killer would have left DNA on Collins' body since she was raped with a foreign object. The length of Alley's appeals process caused Collins' family to successfully work for limitations on groundless habeas corpus appeals. The amount of time between the murder and Alley's execution (20 years, 11 months, 14 days) was longer than Suzanne Collins had been alive (19 years, 1 month, 4 days) when she was killed.

On April 30, 2019, Alley's daughter petitioned the Criminal Court for Shelby County for the DNA test that was denied prior to his execution. A judge denied the request on November 18, 2019.

In 2021, the Innocence Project teamed up with conservative litigator and former solicitor general resident for President George W. Bush, Paul Clement, to launch an appeal to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals on behalf of the estate Sedley Alley. According to the Innocence Project, there was weak physical and eyewitness identification evidence against him. The tire tracks found at the crime scene were not from Sedley's vehicle, and recovered shoe prints did not match his shoes. Key eyewitness accounts also did not match Alley's description (the witnesses described a 5-foot 6-inch to 5-foot 8-inch man with short brown hair and dark complexion while Alley was a 6-foot 4-inch man with medium red hair and a light complexion). Alley told members of his legal team that he was coerced into confessing to a crime he did not commit. In addition, one of the other students in Collins' class (Thomas Bruce) was proven to be a killer 20 years later while her boyfriend John Borrup not only matched the description but was unaware that she had been seeing another man. On May 7, 2021, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals denied the petition.

Advocacy of Jack and Trudy Collins After the murder, the Collinses dealt with their grief in part by joining a Fairfax County support group for surviving members of homicide victims led by Carroll Ellis and Sandra Witt. They began attending the hearings and criminal proceedings of the man who would be convicted of murdering their daughter. Their involvement with the support group led both Collinses to become deeply involved with activism and reform work.

With the appeals of Alley stretching into years, Collins's statement was about the lack of finality with criminal convictions and pressing for reform.

In the early 1990s, Jack and Trudy Collins served as the Eastern Regional Directors of Citizens for Law and Order, based in Oakland, California. Jack Collins worked with Executive Director Lee Chancellor of the Judicial Reform Foundation to create a pamphlet on habeas corpus abuses and history of the judicial process. On May 7, 1991, Jack Collins testified before Congress on habeas corpus reform and the endless appeals that Alley was requesting, and supported the State’s decision to stop DNA testing. Trudy Collins was in attendance in support of her husband.

The Collinses have also established a scholarship named the Suzanne Marie Collins Perpetual Scholarship, first awarded in 1996.